View previous stories
	Extractive projects cause irreparable harm to indigenous cultures, languages, lives by Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues   Apr. 2022   The explosive growth of extractive operations around the world often plays out on indigenous people’s lands without their consent, causing irreparable harm to their livelihoods, cultures, languages and lives, speakers told the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues on Monday, as it opened its 2022 session amid calls to respect their free, prior and informed consent on the existential decisions uprooting their communities.   Gathered in the UN General Assembly, indigenous representatives were welcomed in a traditional ceremony led by Katsenhaienton Lazare of the Bear Clan, Mohawk of the Haudenosaunee, who acknowledged nature in its great diversity - the winds, thunders, lightening, sun and other life forces – which give purpose and protection to humankind, and summoned generations of traditional ancestors who still have much to offer today’s societies.   The invocation fitted with the theme of the Forum’s twenty-first session - 'Indigenous peoples, business, autonomy and the human rights principles of due diligence including free, prior and informed consent' – and start of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, 2022-2032.   In opening remarks, Chair Darío Jose Mejia Montalvo of Colombia said the 2022 theme touches upon the cosmos visions through which indigenous peoples have developed their systems for food, culture and coexistence with nature on their territories.   "We share a holistic relationship with nature, where rights are not anthropocentric,” he explained. “An infinity of sacred histories and stories underpin our visions of the world.”   Ancestors too have rights – including to exist - because their task is enduring in the preservation of life. These ancestral practices maintain life in all its forms, with dignity.   Therefore, he said the question of whether indigenous knowledge is scientific is “meaningless”: concepts of life, energy and spirituality are synonymous. Separating them from an economic, religious or other point of view leads to confusion, disputes and unnecessary clashes.   Trampling over informed consent   He said that while indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination, land, resources and – importantly - free, prior and informed consent are guaranteed under international norms, these rights are often not applied, even in countries where they are legally recognized. They are instead violated routinely in the granting of lumber, timber, mining and mega-dam contracts.   The pillaging of their resources, loss of their ways of life, cultures and languages, and the disappearing and killing of their leaders are the results of harmful business activities.   A binding treaty for business   Mr. Mejia Montalvo said that without a change to the current energy matrix, the extermination of indigenous peoples will continue, along with expropriation of their lands and the sweeping aside of their rights.   He pressed States to help devise a legally binding instrument to regulate transnational business activities – one that adheres to international human rights and includes explicit provisions for indigenous peoples’ rights to their lands, territory and resources, and for their free, prior and informed consent on decisions affecting them.   He described the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 169 as “fundamental loadstars” in this regard, and warned that industries from fashion and media to textiles, food and pharmaceutical production, are perpetuating “enclave economy models” that expropriate knowledge and practices from indigenous peoples. “All of these efforts must be interlinked and stepped up,” he said.   UN General Assembly President Abdulla Shahid said that for generations, indigenous communities have prioritized a relationship with nature - grounded in kinship, centered around reciprocity and infused with reverence. “By emulating their example on a broader scale, we can preserve the Earth’s rich biodiversity and diverse landscapes.”   He pointed out that indigenous people comprise less than five per cent of the global population yet protect 80 per cent of global biodiversity, stressing that high linguistic diversity occurs where conditions for biological diversity thrive. “It’s the richness of one that sustains the other,” he explained.   Mr. Shahid said there is growing scientific evidence that indigenous languages that are rich in oral traditions offer evidence for events that happened thousands of years ago.   “By preserving and promoting these languages, we preserve and promote an important part of our human heritage, identity and belonging,” he said. “We have an obligation to ensure that they can participate in and benefit from the work of the United Nations.”   http://news.un.org/en/story/2022/04/1116902 http://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/unpfii-sessions-2.html   Apr. 2022   "Indigenous peoples, human rights and business activities: UN Guiding Principles and the protection of the rights of Indigenous Peoples in the context of business operations" - Indigenous Peoples Rights International (IPRI)   UN human rights bodies have reiterated that indigenous peoples’ individual and collective human rights are disproportionally impacted by business operations that take place in or around their traditional lands and territories. These impacts include forced displacement, dispossession of lands and resources, and other gross human rights violations, including massacres, murder, torture, rape, incarceration and judicial harassment and other types of violence and criminalization.   Due to this situation, developments at the international level regarding compulsory human rights due diligence by the private sector, as well as compliance with the State duty to protect from human rights violations have particular importance in the defense of indigenous peoples’ rights. One such development was the adoption in 2011 of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: a Framework to Protect, Respect and Remedy (UNGPs). As a widely endorsed framework, there were expectations that UNGPs would contribute to ensuring respect for and protection of human rights in the context of business operations.   More than ten years after their adoption, expectations have not been fulfilled. After assessing progress in implementation, the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights (WGBHR) concluded that big gaps remain, including in protection of indigenous peoples confronting violations of their rights in the context of business activities and in the protection and respect of the rights enshrined in United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), including free, prior and informed consent (FPIC).   This briefing paper provides information regarding the UNGPs, the UNGP+10 process and the work of the UN WGBHR in relation to indigenous peoples’ rights, and some initiatives undertaken by Indigenous Peoples Rights International (IPRI) and its ally organizations so that further implementation of UNGPs ensures respect for the UNDRIP and contributes to the end of the violence and criminalization against indigenous peoples in the context of business operations.   http://iprights.org/resources/publications/briefing-ungps-and-the-protection-of-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples-in-the-context-of-business-operations http://www.iisd.org/articles/deep-dive/indigenous-peoples-defending-environment-all
	Ecuador gives Indigenous people – and nature – a big win by Juanita Rico Open Democracy, agencies   Mar. 2022   The Constitutional Court has ruled that Indigenous peoples have the right to decide over oil and mining projects in the Ecuadorian Amazon.   The recent decision by Ecuador’s highest court in favour of Indigenous people’s rights was a huge victory, not just for them but for nature too.   The ruling by the country’s Constitutional Court, in favour of Indigenous people’s rights and their authority to decide on extractive projects that affect their land, upheld a landmark lower court ruling in 2018.   The ruling was one of three handed down in January in favour of Indigenous communities. One (No. 273-19-JP) protects the A’i Cofán community from any extractive project on their land. Another (No. 28-19-IN) says that Indigeneous peoples’ consent will now be required for oil and mining projects throughout the Ecuadorian Amazon.   The third (No. 45-15-IN) declares the water law, in force since 2014, unconstitutional because it fails to guarantee the resource as a public and communal good. Indigenous groups have long expressed concern that the law could allow for state intrusion into their rights to water and land use. The court also affirmed that reparations ordered by lower courts must be paid, by private companies and the government.   The rulings are a massive victory for Ecuador’s Indigenous people, who make up 70% of the population of the Ecuadorian Amazon.   The verdicts are also an undoubted blow to Ecuador’s recently arrived president, Guillermo Lasso. Last July, within months of being sworn into office, he issued a new hydrocarbons policy that promised to double oil production in Ecuador. Lasso did so in open defiance of Indigenous peoples’ concern for millions of acres of pristine rainforest as well as the physical and cultural survival of Indigenous nations.   The Constitutional Court’s rulings followed a protracted battle waged by the A’i Cofán community of Sinangoe, who live in Sucumbíos province in the north of the Ecuadorian Amazon.   Their territory is composed almost entirely of virgin forest. Due to the threat posed by extractive projects, the A’i Cofán have designed and implemented territorial monitoring and defence techniques, and even written their own law for the control and protection of ancestral territory.   In 2018, the A’i Cofán mobilised against mining in their territory after seeing heavy machinery appear for the first time on the banks of their most important river, the Aguarico. Environment ministry officials claimed this was a case of illegal mining, but when the A’i Cofán learned that the government had allowed it, they sued.   They challenged 52 gold-mining concessions in Sucumbíos province. The Ecuadorian government had already granted 20 concessions to multinationals and another 32 were in the pipeline.   In July 2018, a judge in Gonzalo-Pizarro, in Sucumbios province, ruled in their favour. The ruling stated that the Indigenous peoples’ right to free, prior and informed consultation had been violated by the authorities. The judge ordered the immediate suspension of all mining concessions, including those in the process of being granted.   It seemed that the A’i Cofán had won the battle, but they hadn’t. An appeal against the ruling was immediately lodged. In September, the mining companies and environmental authorities insisted that prior consultation was not necessary, arguing that the activities were not taking place on Indigenous territory. A few weeks later, a provincial court upheld the Gonzalo-Pizarro ruling.   After a two-year wait, in an unprecedented hearing last November, the Constitutional Court said publicly that Indigenous communities’ rights had been violated, including their constitutional right to prior consultation before extractive activity on their lands is given the green light.   It is important to recognise that prior consultation is a basic right for Indigenous peoples, as enshrined in the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Convention 169. This is fundamental to addressing the pressures exerted by extractive industries.   In Ecuador, there is a history of abuse and disregard of Indigenous communities, which renders them invisible. It is common for companies to violate or manipulate the right to prior consultation in order to get the government to grant them operating licences for extractive projects.   The court’s three January rulings bring to an end the saga of the 2018 ruling and the 2021 hearing. They make clear that the court will not allow Indigenous peoples’ rights to be violated. This gives hope to many other communities fighting for their rights in the region.   Important precedent   The Constitutional Court’s second ruling also declared unconstitutional some articles of a 2019 decree that allowed oil exploitation of the Yasuní National Park, which has been recognised as a biosphere reserve by UNESCO. Yasuní has the greatest diversity per square metre of any area on the planet. The ruling is crucial because it will prevent seven oil platforms, currently planned for Yasuní, from operating.   On 7 February, Ecuador’s ministry of energy and non-renewable resources said that this particular ruling would not affect oil production because there are no concessions near the biosphere reserve. However, it did not offer any evidence to support its claim.   Ecuador’s Constitutional Court has set an important precedent, not just for the country but for the region, one badly affected by deforestation and where Indigenous peoples’ rights are routinely violated.   The rulings underline Ecuador’s unique status within Latin America as the only country where nature is recognised as a subject of rights. That means that as part of the country’s absolute constitutional rights, nature has the same rights as a citizen.   As the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon struggle for their rights, they continue to challenge and halt deforestation, river pollution and the degradation of biodiversity, practices that threaten the planet.   http://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/ecuador-amazon-indigenous-ai-cofan/ http://www.iwgia.org/en/news/4608-the-iachr-and-the-right-to-self-determination.html http://www.iwgia.org/en/news/4619-iwgia-briefing-analysing-recognition-indigenous-peoples-ipcc-report.html http://debatesindigenas.org/ http://insideclimatenews.org/news/01042022/indigenous-land-rights-paris-agreement/ http://www.forestdeclaration.org/resources/sink-or-swim http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol26/iss3/art19/ http://www.ran.org/ http://www.globalforestwatch.org/map/ http://pulitzercenter.org/rainforest-investigations-network-initiative http://un.arizona.edu/ Visit the related web page
	View more stories